Entangled in bootlegging schemes, the deaths of a friend, a sheriff, and a deputy, and his own jealousy putting him at odds with his girlfriend, Sadie Rose, 19-year-old Owen Jensen’s life seems to be spiraling out of control. Starting his own car dealership, even if it was with money from Mr. Pengler, who is a known bootlegger, was supposed to enable Owen to escape a life tied to his father’s creamery business and make a better future for Sadie.
“You get tangled up with that bootlegger, it’ll come at a price,” Owen’s father warns him the night before his death, a delayed consequence of too much alcohol.
With his own brothers still too young to take over the family creamery business, Owen reluctantly steps up. However, still determined to build a more comfortable life for himself and Sadie, he also goes ahead with his plan to start a car dealership using the loan from Mr. Pengler. Just as his father warned, however, Owen finds himself falling deep into a financial pit and the only way out is to help the bootlegger with his schemes.
Rather than basking in the bright future he had envisioned, Owen’s life only gets harder as he is involved in multiple cover-ups and forced to lie to his family and friends. Throughout it all, he struggles to justify illegally transporting the same substance responsible for his father’s death.
Inspired by stories from her father’s youth, Mary Casanova’s novel, Ice-Out is set in the frigid winter of 1922 in a small town where the automobile is still a new commodity and Prohibition is in full swing. As with most of Casanova’s books, there are no easy answers to the moral questions that are posed. Both a thought-provoking narrative and a fast-paced adventure await readers in this novel.
Casanova’s books are available online, at Drury Lane Books and other book sellers.
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